I Want to Show Him That He Didn’t Break Me

Trigger warning: This post contains sensitive topics such as emotional and physical abuse.

When I was 17, instead of driving in tunnels with my friends feeling infinite, being excited about the prom and feeling like I was invincible the way most teenagers (especially if they’re high school seniors) feel, I was sleeping on my friend Katee’s floor and living out of my car.

In the sixth grade my mom told my younger sister and me that she’d been seeing someone. Two weeks later we were moved into his house 30 miles away and he was our stepdad. My only confidantes were my sister Stephanie and our new dog Daisy. Things were hard at home. He wouldn’t let my mom speak Vietnamese to me and my sister. He would say, “Ching chong ching. You’re in America, speak ENGLISH!” She also wasn’t allowed to cook Vietnamese food for us, and only did when he would occasionally go out to the bar to drink instead of from his recliner in front of the television. One morning I woke up to find that he had dumped all our soy sauce down the sink and thrown our chopsticks in the garbage.

Our lives became an exhausting cycle of fear, anxiety and chores. The only break I got was going to school. I dreaded going home every day, and wished that the bus ride would last forever. Stephanie, who went to the elementary school in our neighborhood, would always be there waiting for me at the bus stop when I got off. As bad as things got, I was always glad that we were together.

We would walk home together and frantically clean the house to his spotless standards. Then we’d watch TV (“Lilo & Stitch”, “Recess”, “Lloyd in Space”) until we heard the garage door open and ran to our rooms. Weekends were the worst. When we asked to hang out with friends, the answer was usually “No.” So we stayed home, trying to stay out of his way. He spent a lot of his time in front of the TV, shouting at us to come whenever we needed something. This became extra frustrating when I was moved into the downstairs room. There were times where he would call me up from downstairs just to hand him the remote. Sometimes it was for something worse. To be yelled at for eating all the mandarin oranges. Or the time he told me to go into his room, bring the bathroom scale and weigh myself in front of him, and then called me fat. My sister and I lived in fear of our names being called. He expected us to jump up and run to him immediately. When either of us had to shower, we would have to ask the other person to cover for us and then I’d spend my whole shower trying to listen for my name. I was too scared to ever even take naps in case he’d call for me.

He would often throw fits like a child. One night my mom and I were in Stephanie’s room with her watching “American Idol” while I worked on a report for school due the next day. He was mad about something (I can’t remember what now), so he shut off all the power in the house so my mom couldn’t watch TV and I couldn’t finish my report. He would turn it back on for 30 seconds at a time, and I would try to write down as much as I could before he shut it off again. Another time he got mad, he went to the fridge and started dumping entire jars and bottles of condiments (ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, relish, etc.), milk and juice all over the kitchen floor. When he finished, he told my mom to clean it up and went to bed.

I was forced to grow up very quickly. You have to when you’re 11 and you realize that getting your first period and what happens in the next “Harry Potter” book are no longer your biggest worries. I always feared that he would somehow take Stephanie away from me. The first year we lived there my sister and I would always try to sleep together. We were frightened and needed each other. She’d sneak out of her bed and into mine once we thought he was asleep across the hall. He would barge into my room and yell at us for my sister to go back to her room. He forbade us from sleeping together. Stephanie’s room shared a wall with mine and there was there was a small hole in the corner where cable wires were fed through. We tried making a telephone out of plastic cups and string so we could talk to each other late at night instead.

We were just trying to survive any way that we could. At first I was very angry and would talk and fight back and stand up for my mom and my sister anytime anything was done to them too. This always got me in worse trouble, and it was very exhausting. Then one day when I was getting it really bad, I realized that my mom never took my side or spoke up for me, so I shut up and stopped standing up for her or myself. My next survival tactic was to kiss his ass and be his little buddy during his manic periods. This didn’t really work, and just made me feel disgusted with myself. This was also around the time I began getting very depressed. When I started seeing a counselor, he told me that only retarded people needed to see therapists. One day instead of going to school, Stephanie and I took the bus to the local sheriff’s station and tried asking for help. They didn’t take us very seriously and told us that because he didn’t hit us, there was nothing they could do. No one could help us.

For the last few years, I completely gave up. I put my head down, tried to be invisible and make it through high school graduation as quietly as possible. Now I realize this must be my mom’s way of coping and surviving.

Quietly didn’t happen. My senior year was when he was the most aggressive about antagonizing me and drawing me out for a fight until I couldn’t take it anymore and everything exploded and fell apart. A small argument led to a physical one. He shoved me, kicked my mom down the stairs and grabbed my half-sister and drove off with her, drunk. He spent the weekend in jail. I told my mom that there was no way I was going to still be there when he got back and left that night. It was extremely difficult and sad to leave the way that I did, but I felt hugely relieved to have escaped the toxicity and abuse. What hurt most was the feeling that I abandoned Stephanie. We always knew that since I was three years older, I would graduate and get out first, but we weren’t prepared for the way it happened. I hated knowing that she continued to suffer his wrath while I got away. On days where I beat myself up and feel guilty for leaving her behind, I remind myself that my leaving showed her that it was possible and hopefully gave her strength to do the same. And she did, two years later at 16.

Even though I wasn’t living under his roof, he still found ways to try to hurt me through my mom and my sister. A few months after I left I came over to try to see Stephanie. She had called me crying hysterically and said that she needed me. He wouldn’t let me in the house and called the cops saying, “My stepdaughter is trying to get into the house and I don’t feel safe with her here.” As I was walking toward my car to wait for the police to come, my mom told me that it was his house and if he didn’t want me there, that was his right. But I’m your daughter. I felt like she had abandoned me the same way she did all those years ago when she left me to fend for myself, an 11-year-old girl against a grown man.

It’s been six years since I left and have been financially independent. There were some very hard times where I was so broke I wasn’t sure I could afford tampons and entire weeks where I had to eat bulk bags of off-brand cereal for every meal. But I was free. I was very fortunate and will forever be grateful that Katee’s family took me in for as long as they did, until I could afford to rent a room on my own. When other people I knew moved out on their own, they marveled at the awesomeness of having friends over whenever they want and staying out late. I enjoyed those things too, but I also loved being able to freely use chopsticks without being ridiculed with racial slurs and finish a bag of chips in the pantry without fear of being yelled at or grounded.

I love the quote from “Pretty in Pink” where Andie says, “I just want them to know that they didn’t break me.” He tried, but he didn’t break me. I graduated from a great school where, because I was paying for my own education, I had the freedom to choose to study the arts. I have a studio apartment in Seattle that I’m obsessed with, I have a hot boyfriend who’s incredibly kind to me and I’m supporting myself teaching and writing, two things I’ve always wanted to do.

I no longer see or speak to him outside of occasional holidays, when I return home out of guilt to see my mom and my half-sister, but I’m still dealing with what he did and the damage he’s left. I tense up and feel scared before angry when I’m on the phone with my mom and I can hear him in the background yelling at her. Father figures, especially if they’re very masculine can be triggering for me. It’s one reason out of many that I don’t want to get married and have kids — I don’t want to see my partner become a father. I want to face and overcome all the parts of me he’s vandalized, and writing this is part of it. I’ve been trying to write about this for years, and have never been able to find the voice or the courage. And because

I was afraid that no one would believe me or think that it was as bad as I was saying. But that’s exactly what abusers want is to keep you silent.

So I’m writing this to say that this happened to me.